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Why for this life there's no man smart enough, life's too short for learning every trick and bluff.

Maccyn wrote:

Benkyo wrote:

... or 1 in 3735.

So likely to happen at least once in even a short gaming career.

~1900 games is short gaming career? Wow. I find it hard to imagine topping 1000 before I die. I'm currently at around 50, playing about a game a month.

Anyway, that is a 1 in 3735 chance for 18 coups, rather than 1 in 3735 for the game. At this point on the probability curve, every extra deviation from the mean lowers the probability drastically. If there were some way to factor in the OP discrepancy, and the below average war, space, and realignment rolls, the game would be shown to be much more of an outlier. To illustrate, with 18 dice, just one more point further from the mean would make for 1 in 6305 odds, and two would be 1 in 10840.

However, the thread title is "What's the greatest difference in coup rolls you've had over the course of a game?" Sure, I posted a bunch of analysis of my own game, because I found it interesting to do so, but coups are easily comparable.

I sometimes wonder about how the measurement of random factors may influence future design decisions. For example if the luck-o-meter goes too far one side may gain a minor compensatory bonus on passing certain thresholds. Fo TS a favourable card might be added to the draw or a bonus power might be gained. Obviously adding these sorts of things to an established design like TS would likely be regarded as unecessary and athematic but if incorporated at an early stage they could be an interesting feature for apps which are inspired by board games.

In any case, I've had similar experiences but nothing that bad. After a while I think everyone realises that if you play enough games you'll probably have a nightmare like that somewhere along the line.

Why for this life there's no man smart enough, life's too short for learning every trick and bluff.

Paul, I think you know where I stand on this... I think the random elements of TS contribute greatly to its enduring and widespread appeal. Unlike Go or chess, you can, correctly or otherwise, write off a loss to bad luck and get back into another game.

I think obvious "compensation" can backfire badly in terms of how people perceive games like this. Better to rely on the old statistical probability, and hope it averages out in the long run... by which I mean over many games, as there may be no coming back from a 1/216 T1 disaster.

The problem of course is when people who aren't already sold on the game might write it off as a luck-fest, but whatever, their loss.

I actually enjoyed this train wreck of a game a great deal. I wanted to see how far it could go, and it didn't disappoint. I definitely need more practice at managing "un-salvageable" situations (I've yet to have a highly-improbable quagmire/bear trap run, which I believe you specialise in).